What matters on the ground

The late V.P. Singh said something about the Bharatiya Janata Party that is as accurate today as it was when he was Prime Minister. Singh had partnered with L.K. Advani and Atal Behari Vajpayee in the late 1980s, when they were trying to defeat Rajiv Gandhi. That was the time when the Ayodhya movement had picked up, and as he/Singh was to discover later on that it would damage India, and so broke off his partnership.

This also ended his government, and he was able to claim he had martyred himself on the altar of secularism. He then spent his last years trying to cobble up various groups whose primary political objective was the defeat of the BJP. While doing this, he was informed by a reporter, that Vajpayee exuded sobriety and preached unity and tolerance, so not all of the BJP was communal.

To this Singh replied that the BJP did not need to always talk aggressively. The people to listen to were its supporters. What sort of language was being used on the ground? That was more important than the homilies that the most senior partymen offered to the media. On the ground, it was pure venom, he said. I was reminded of this on hearing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fine words this week on harmony and tolerance. Mr Modi went out of his way and attended a church function amid news that in Delhi acts of vandalism against churches were rising.

He said warm things about two Indians from Kerala elevated to sainthood, Kuriakose Elias Chavara and Euphresia. Mr Modi said of one of them, Chavara, that “in an era when access to education was limited, he stressed that every church should have a school. He thus opened the doors of education to people from all sections of society”. Showing off his impressive knowledge of Sanskrit, the PM reeled off lines which preach openness and tolerance. He also quoted Swami Vivekananda’s line on Hindus believing not only in universal tolerance, but acceptance of/that all religions as true.

When I had interviewed Mr Modi once, many years ago, and brought up this subject he had been guarded. He told me he did not want to speak about tolerance and insisted that we should instead look at Hindu acceptance because tolerance was a step below it. In the speech at the Christian function, he departed from this formulation and said a few things quite clearly, which are important to recount. His words were: “We consider the freedom to have, to retain, and to adopt, a religion or belief, is a personal choice of a citizen.

My government will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or undue influence. My government will not allow any religious group, belonging to the majority or the minority, to incite hatred against others, overtly or covertly. Mine will be a government that gives equal respect to all religions.” It was important that it be spelled out with such clarity. Mr Modi has claimed he was offended by members of his Cabinet and his party, as also his allies in the Sangh Parivar, when they made some remarks on this subject. If that sort of language repeats itself, the media will have a reference point in this speech and can hold him to account.

This speech came out of an aspect of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personality that does not often reveal itself — it is his Gujarati spirit, which seeks compromise and looks at benefit rather than sticking stubbornly by ideology. Mr Modi shows this side regularly when he deals with development issues, where he has totally undermined and dismantled the RSS’ economic ideology as sketched out by the ideologue Deen Dayal  Upadhyay. Mr Modi rarely expresses himself on matters of faith relations, and that is why this speech was important.

We have finally heard the leader and know where he stands. We must now anticipate that the same language and the same reaching-out happens from his subordinates and others in the Sangh Parivar. It is, as V.P. Singh had observed all those years ago, pointless to be told pacifying words by leaders when the followers carried out business as usual on the ground.

Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist